Virgin Recipe: Richlieu Mold

How I love the recipes that pose questions! The obvious one for Richlieu Mold is what, if anything, is meant by the name. I thought that possibly this is a classic dessert modified for Jell-O, along the lines of Peach Melba. Alas, Mr. Google turned up little in the way of explanation. I found a few versions of something called Bombe Richlieu, which seems to be a rum-and-coffee-flavored frozen dessert that bears little resemblance to Richlieu Mold. An image search on “bombe Richlieu” turns up a bunch of photos of battleships. Now there’s something to ponder…

Richlieu Mold ingredients

The base of Richlieu Mold is “any red flavor” Jell-O. I went with cherry, partly because I’m getting a little tired of strawberry, but also because one of the ingredients is cherries and I didn’t want to throw too many different flavors in there.

I’m calling this an Orange Boycott recipe because, even though orange Jell-O is in no way involved, the other fruit ingredient is, officially, orange sections cut into chunks, and there’s supposed to be a couple of tablespoons of orange juice in the Jell-O liquid. Anyway, it just feels fitting, now that we’ve passed the 100-day mark (and the “100 days since the Women’s March” point), to make a gesture like this.

As a substitute, I used canned pineapple chunks, and two tablespoons of the juice from the can. I like pineapple.

Richlieu Mold circa 1974

The recipe includes a topping, which can be either Dream Whip or Cool Whip (I chose Dream Whip because that’s what Bryan prefers, although to my mind each is creepy in its own special way) mixed with toasted slivered almonds. I toasted the almonds myself, and that was probably the most pleasant part of making this recipe, because toasting almonds smell nice, and it felt good to have the oven going earlier this afternoon on what turned out to be a chilly day – strange, because yesterday was quite warm and humid.

Not surprisingly, the gelatin part is just fruit suspended in Jell-O, so the prep was pretty routine – make the Jell-O as usual, using the canned cherry and pineapple juices instead of cold water, thicken over an ice water bath, fold in the fruit, put it in the mold and chill until firm.

Richlieu Mold á la Freak Mountain

For some reason, the Jell-O was quite stubborn about coming out of the mold this time. (Yes, I remembered to lube the mold!) It wouldn’t unmold until it had been warmed in a water bath to the point of being definitely melty, so it came out looking untidy. I hate when that happens.

For eating it’s a perfectly decent dessert, although I can’t quite get over my particular squeamishness about canned cherries. I mean, I ate them, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The pineapple chunks are fine in this, possibly better than orange chunks would have been. I prepared the Dream Whip with almond extract instead of vanilla extract, and the extra almond flavor goes well with the gelatin. One small gripe is that the toasted slivered almonds are an odd textural addition to the dish. I found that I had to be conscious of chewing each mouthful thoroughly so that I wouldn’t end up choking a bit on inadequately masticated almond bits. Bryan didn’t have this problem, though, so it was probably just me being lame.

Bryan declared that the cherry flavor was overwhelming, and maybe it was – but better that than orange.